The IGN review's confirmation of my earlier impression that this game disses hair metal (stupidly, as it has some in the soundtrack) convinced me not to get this game; that and the fact that it's EA. I hate music Naziism, and Hair Metal certainly counts as metal more than what came in the 1990s.

The difference between Autism and Optimism? Autism is a mental disorder; Optimism is a SEVERE one.

I haven't gotten to see more than just the demo yet, since I left my PS3 at my other place in Vegas - but however you feel about hair metal, it was a pretty logical choice as the apocalyptic enemy that kills seventies metal.

My guess (again, having not played it yet) is that the hair metal that's on the soundtrack is there for the parts of the game where you're fighting the hair metal armies.

People who think that the game's trying to be a music Piltogg don't get it: the developers of the game clearly think that metal, while awesome, is really dumb. Part of understanding metal is understanding how dumb it is, which is PRECISELY why metal is so fucking cool.

stubby wrote:I haven't gotten to see more than just the demo yet, since I left my PS3 at my other place in Vegas - but however you feel about hair metal, it was a pretty logical choice as the apocalyptic enemy that kills seventies metal.

Yes, but why make the game about what killed 1970s metal, as opposed to what killed metal in general; ie, why couldn't they make the enemy the musical styles of the 1990s? The reason that would be a better choice is that hair metal, at least the better portions of it, isn't a radical break from the style of the 1970s musically-speaking; hell, many metal bands from the 1970s were still big in the 1980s. The break is in imagery; less emphasis on fire-and-brimstone hell and more on campy male flamboyance and raging sexuality. However, it was still metal, and a simple evolution of past styles, not the new rival. Grunge was what really devolved rock music from the peak to which it rose.

The difference between Autism and Optimism? Autism is a mental disorder; Optimism is a SEVERE one.

Because a video game based on pop music and rap would be boring. There wouldn't be awesome monsters, cars, guitars, chicks, and other awesome things. Metal's the only area in music where an awesome video game could be born.

Nah, metal was dead long before grunge showed up, and grunge just wouldn't fit into a game like this. A game about metal needs an epic confrontation for its climax. An army of apathetic disaffected losers, whose whole raison d'être is the celebration of how boring and irrelevant they are, is not a viable element for constructing an epic game adversary.

OneEye589 wrote:Because a video game based on pop music and rap would be boring. There wouldn't be awesome monsters, cars, guitars, chicks, and other awesome things. Metal's the only area in music where an awesome video game could be born.

But it wouldn't be about them. It would be about metal, with the pop music as villains.

stubby wrote:Nah, metal was dead long before grunge showed up, and grunge just wouldn't fit into a game like this.

That statement seems to imply you have a rather limited view of what metal is, and it isn't "dead" now--it just ceased being popular.

stubby wrote:A game about metal needs an epic confrontation for its climax. An army of apathetic disaffected losers, whose whole raison d'être is the celebration of how boring and irrelevant they are, is not a viable element for constructing an epic game adversary.

You may have a point there, but it still can be countered by arguing that the existing adversary is also imperfect. The game forces an association between hair metal and the easy-to-lampoon sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle, which to be fair, isn't hard to do because they already have become so associated, but the truth is that the hair metal era merely put those themes at the blatant forefront of metal culture; they were always there before. Ozzy, for example, was one of the most notable people in the 1970s for touching upon gothic, arguably Satanic imagery (all in good fun), but he's also notorious for what a debauched wreck he became for a long time.

The problem I have with this game, besides the fact that it thumbs its nose at one of my favorite styles of music, is its hypocrisy and double-standards. It portrays "classic" heavy metal as a magical, otherworldly myth built on album covers and music video imagery, and places the cold, hard reality about the stupidly hedonistical lifestyles of metal bands into the spotlight only when dealing with its villains. It's ignoring reality in one case and exagerating it in the other, hence its flawed and preachy arguement.